Should You Be Hitting Up or Down on Driver?

Swing Experts Joseph Mayo and Grant Waite discuss whether golfers should hit up or down on their driver, and why most amateurs lose yards on their drives.

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Hi, my name is Joseph Mayo, from Waite Mayo Golf—and I’m here with my teaching partner, long-time PGA Tour player Grant Waite; and in this video, we’re going to discuss whether you should hit up or hit down on your driver. Well, on the PGA Tour—if you look statistically—these guys are averaging about a degree and a half down. But also remember, they’ve got a ball speed that’s approaching 170 miles an hour. The average golfer or club golfer: you do not. Absolutely not; the average club golfer probably swings his driver around 90 to 95 miles per hour, and he’s probably not hitting the center of the face every time, so that’s also a reduction in ball speed. So, the PGA Tour player with all that speed can hit down; what we’re saying is that the club golfer should not hit down. They should hit up; and here are the reasons why. Well, we know without question that hitting down on the ball does not make the ball go up; we know that’s a myth. It actually helps reduce the launch angle. Now Grant, there are three things that make a golf ball go high and far: we’ve got ball speed pushing it through the air, we’ve got backspin, and we’ve got initial launch angle. Now I think you’ll agree Grant that we’re not going to wake up one day with an extra 10 mile per hour ball speed; that’s not going to happen. And the backspin is what it is, and we know we need to spin the ball 23 to 2400 RPM. But launch angle, that’s one thing that we can manipulate. Sure, so if we said that “Okay, for any given speed, we have to launch the ball at some given angle. And the slower your club head speed and the ball speed, the higher that we have to launch this ball in order to get performance out of the ball. Well, we know that the average club golfer who’s swinging his driver 90 miles per hour, believe it or not—and we know this is shocking—you need to be launching your driver 15, 16, 17 degrees with low spin; and Grant, is there any way to launch a ball 17 degrees with low spin by hitting down on it? Well, not effectively, that’s for sure. Absolutely not; so guys, you need to be hitting up on your driver unless you’ve got PGA Tour ball speed. You’ve got to launch it high in the air; you’ve got to hit it with low spin. On behalf of Grant Waite, I’m Joseph Mayo; thank you for watching our video.